


The Wand Act and the Settlement Act: How Slavery and Race Affected Magical America

by lurker2209



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Essay, Meta, Other, Pottermore Fix-It, Warning: Descriptions of Fictional Racist Policies and Ideologies, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 18:23:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6621376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurker2209/pseuds/lurker2209
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The wizards and witches of America couldn't avoid the issue of slavery.  This is the history of those who ignored it, those who perpetuated it, and those who fought it.  This is the history that should not be forgotten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wand Act and the Settlement Act: How Slavery and Race Affected Magical America

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, if you’re not on Pottermore, all of this is readable, I think. I explain a couple of terms from Pottermore later in the notes. It fits in the general sense of how she writes American magical history; if your headcannon is wildly different, I’d love to have you read and comment with your take on race and slavery. 
> 
> I read Pottermore myself and like some parts and dislike others. When I read JRK’s pieces on the history of magical America, like a lot of people, I felt like something was missing. You just can’t talk about American history without talking about slavery and race. It affects everything and everyone, including magical people living in secrecy. So I tried to write something that would address part of that story. 
> 
> This is an overview. It’s written in a similar style to the one used on Pottermore, with a broad view of history and a key anecdote or two. There are lots more details to fill in. I mention a few at the end.
> 
> I’m a white woman. It’s likely parts of this are flawed because of my blindnesses. Please point out my errors, and make critiques; I’ll make changes. If I’ve missed something huge and blundered, I’ll take the whole thing down. But, like I said, the history of slavery and racism permeates American history and it feels wrong for white people to ignore that. 
> 
> If you’re not on Pottermore, Ilvermorny is the American school of magic. MACUSA is the Magical Congress of the United States, American equivalent of the ministry of magic. Rapport’s Law banned marriage between magical and non-magical people. In general, magical America is more isolationist than magical Europe, although not as pure-blood supremacist, as I read it. 
> 
> Also, I don’t use the American term No-Maj. It sounds like slang and it doesn’t work as an adjective. I’m assuming that American witches and wizards use non-magical in formal writing.

It has been said by a wide number of non-magical historians that the history of the United States of America cannot be understood apart from slavery. The same is tragically true of the history of magic in America. It is asserted by many that wizards and witches in America did not own slaves, unlike their non-magical neighbors. Wizards and witches, it is said, could use magic to dispense with the need for servants, white or black, enslaved or free. African witches and wizards used magic to avoid being captured as slaves themselves, such that slavery was entirely a muggle problem.

  
While this is broadly true, it is also fallacious. Magical children are born to non-magical parents in every part of the world, and the slave quarters of in American from the 17th to the 19th century were no different. The earliest of these magical people had no magical education, and little control over their abilities. They were often punished harshly for accidental magic by slave owners and overseers. But some managed a level of control, and passed this on to their children, who learned more, and thus a number of forms of indigenous African-American magic were created. Many of these enslaved witches and wizards managed to escape, and to help their families escape. Some of them lived in secrecy throughout America, others moved to Canada or returned to Africa. Many felt a moral imperative to help their enslaved friends and family, and this brought them into conflict with the broader American wizarding community, which valued secrecy above all else.

  
And, there were in fact a very small number of documented magical slave-holders and there may have been more operating in secrecy. At least two known dark wizards and one dark witch used muggle plantations both to hide their experiments in forbidden curses and as a source for experimental subjects. In two of these cases, MACUSA failed to act until the dark witch or wizard began to act against magical people and in one case intervened only after the wizard killed a prominent non-magical neighbor, arousing attention from the non-magical authorities.

  
In three or four other cases, wizards inherited slaves or plantations from their non-magical parents. One such case involved a wizard by the name of Jeb Boomscrable, who inherited a large farm and approximately 20 slaves in what is now West Virginia. Boomscrable ordered his slaves to plant a number of magical plants in addition to the corn and tobacco and spent a great deal of time experimenting with potions. The enslaved people generally knew him to be a wizard of some sort and he reportedly used the imperious curse at times to keep them in line.

  
This might have gone unnoticed by MACUSA (as two or three other cases had been) except for a courageous young enslaved man by the name of Zebadiah Ivory who was an unrecognized and untaught wizard. How he managed to learn to read, and to read Boomscrable’s spellbooks is a not recorded, but by all accounts he managed to accumulate enough magical knowledge to challenge Boomscrable. When he heard that Boomscrable planned to sell his sister to another slaveholder, he crept into the farmhouse at night, seized Boomscrable’s wand and held him hostage, demanding his own freedom and that of his family. Boomscrable managed to use his wife’s wand to counterattack and the resulting duel injured both parties and attracted a great deal of attention. Ivory, though suffering from a jelly-legs jinx he didn’t know how to remove, managed to organize his family and used magic to help them escape to Philadelphia.

  
Boomscrable’s oldest son also hurried to Philadelphia, to demand that MACUSA punish the man who had permanently injured his father with a blasting curse, and also to demand the return of his father’s slaves. Ivory, by contrast had become a vocal member of the mostly black wizarding abolitionists, who wanted to use magic to free enslaved people.

  
While a number of wizards and witches were horrified at the idea of magical people being enslaved and never taught magic, many more of them were much more horrified at the multiple breaches of the Statute of Secrecy the entire situation had caused. They were even more horrified to learn that Boomscrable was the father of Zebediah and his siblings, at least one of whom was a young witch.

  
One or two wealthy slaving-holding wizards argued that black slaves did not count as non-magical people for the purpose of the statute of secrecy, an argument MACUSA (and the ICW) resoundingly rejected. They passed the Boomscrable Act of 1821, which has misleadingly come to be known as the magical abolition act. The Boomscrable Act, however, freed no slaves; it simply forbade any witch or wizard from preforming magic in a household or property that included any non-magical persons, explicitly including slaves or hired workers. A clause permitted any witch or wizard who inherited slaves to live on the property for 30 days to arrange to the sale of such slaves or to surrender his or her wand.  
They also amended Rapport’s Law to forbid any sexual relationship between magical people and non-magical people. This was absurdly unenforceable, of course, but fines were proscribed for any witch or wizard who had a half-blood child out of wedlock.

  
MACUSA did refuse to return the Ivory family to slavery. Both men were fined heavily for the secrecy-violating duel, although a sympathetic group of witches and wizards collected money to pay Zebadiah Ivory’s fine. A few months later, Ivory apparated to his former home and freed other enslaved relatives and friends. The Boomscrable family protested that these unexplained disappearances were violations of the Statute of Secrecy.

  
Many witches and wizards, especially those from southern states, saw the magical abolitionists as an inevitable catastrophe. A magically-led slave rebellion could result in a massive breach of the International Statue of Secrecy. They argued that black witches and wizards should not be allowed to learn magic at all. Others felt that any no child with magical ability should ever be a slave of non-magical people, but that they ought to be identified young and adopted into magical families. Only a small minority supported the abolitionists, arguing that slavery was a nasty non-magical invention, and oblivation spells could be used to hide the disappearances.

  
The compromise position pleased no one, but it did preserve secrecy. The Wand Act of 1822 held that “no negro witch or wizard shall possess or be taught to use a wand, this being a European invention unsuitable to the negro race. Nor shall they be taught apparition.” Black witches and wizards were not permitted at Ilvermorny, but were to be educated in “African magic” at a separate institution. While cultural differences in the types of magic taught in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas exist to this day, the idea that black witches and wizards could not properly learn to use a wand because it was first invented by Europeans was seen as ridiculous by the international magical community of the day, and has been completely debunked in the present. The ICW of the time, dealing with a host of related issues in places colonized by European muggles was content to allow a solution that would preserve secrecy, however absurd and racist.

  
Perhaps acknowledging the tenuousness of this edict, MACUSA also turned to a popular solution among non-magical Americans: resettlement of black people in Africa. The Settlement Act, passed the same year as the Wand Act, held that any black witch or wizard could petition a magical sheriff’s office for a portkey to transport them either to the Uagadou wizarding school or to a magical settlement on the Ivory Coast. He or she could bring immediate family members only, which was limited to the parents and siblings of a minor, or the spouse and children of an adult. The magical abolitionists rejected this solution, as it would require them to abandon friends and extended family members to the cruelty and horrors of slavery. They continued to help magical and non-magical enslaved people escape, although a number were prosecuted under the secrecy laws for magic preformed during such escaptes. Other black witches and wizards did use the Settlement Act to escape slavery, as the Portkeys were available not just at MACUSA headquarters then in Philadelphia, but also at the magical Sheriff’s offices in New Orleans, LA and Charleston, SC. But those were not found to be actually magical, and unpermitted family members were refused protection and left for non-magical slave catchers to find.

  
MACUSA also did everything in their power to keep witches and wizards out of the American Civil War, and prevent magical people on both sides from joining the fighting. The isolation of the wizarding community meant that they largely succeeded, although many witches and wizards used magic to save lives and treat the wounded. The scale of the non-magical casualties shocked and horrified many magical people, and many reacted by retreating further from their non-magical neighbors or by moving to the open lands out west.

  
With the end of the Civil War and the threat of a magically-led slave rebellion past, MACUSA relaxed several of their racist policies. Black wizards and witches were permitted the use of wands, and black students were admitted to Ilvermorny in 1870. Within a decade, hundreds of black students who would never have had an opportunity to learn magic while enslaved, received letters from Ilvermorny. The magical community of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was less racially segregated than the non-magical community, but the impact of the Wand act was easily wiped away. Many retained the idea that black witches and wizards were less capable of wanded magic; and many black witches and wizards felt that they were still treated as though they were inferior to white witches and wizards. Resettlement in Africa remained available from MACUSA until 1900, although smaller and smaller numbers were interested in leaving the country they considered home. Tensions remained between the mostly white magical community, which was fanatically devoted to secrecy and Rapport’s Law, and many newly identified black witches and wizards, who wanted to address the hardships of their families under the violent responses to reconstruction and the Jim Crow regime.

  
Some of these problems were addressed in in the middle of the twentieth century, when black witches and wizards were strong advocates of the repeal of Rapport’s Law. Many were involved in the non-magical civil rights movement, and advocated for the inclusion of the magic developed by African-Americans into the curriculum at Ilverymorny and for more black representation in MACUSA’s institutions.

  
Today, most black and many white magical Americans would say that issues of race remain, and that institutional racism is still an issue . Many black witches and wizards are at the forefront of the Flexible Secrecy movement, which advocates that magical people should show more concern for the welfare of non-magical people, particularly with respect to oblivation, and that the International Statute of Secrecy should not prevent magical people from working with non-magical people to address injustices around race, poverty, sexual orientation or gender identity in America and around the world.

**Author's Note:**

> I think this is missing details of the African-American types of magic that developed from that specific culture. I don’t feel qualified to invent things without misusing the culture and offending someone, but I’d welcome suggestions, especially from POC’s. 
> 
> I know it’s also very vague about the 20th century. This is mostly because I’m trying to keep it compliant with Pottermore cannon and JKR stops in the 1920’s. I’ve assumed Rapport’s Law gets repealed at some point around the middle of the twentieth century, but that’s speculation. 
> 
> I have a few ideas another chapter on the magical history of Native Americans and the expansion of the American West, and also some broader ideas about how the magical community reacted to colonialism in general. I also have a few thoughts on LGBTQ magical people, although it seems everyone has a headcannon for that.
> 
> I'm going to assume in good faith that people on AO3 can discuss race respectfully and without slurs, but I will turn on comment moderation if I need to.


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